Glimpsing what lies beneath

The desire to conserve marine life begins with experiencing what is under the waves

A child gets close to nature at The Sheikh Zayed Desert Learning Centre at Al Ain Zoo. WAM

A week ago at London Zoo, a western lowland gorilla called Kumbuka found an unlocked door by his enclosure – and opened it. The resulting diversion – it was called an escape by the media, but the zoo was keen to present it as more like a brief ramble through unknown parts by Kumbuka – trended on social media as zoo visitors shared photos of themselves huddling in a building until the situation was contained.

Not surprisingly, Kumbuka’s walk – during which he encountered no visitors, only startled staff who eventually herded him back to his enclosure – restarted a debate about whether such majestic animals should be in zoos in the first place. The British nature TV presenter, and national spokesman for all things animal-related, David Attenborough weighed in to the debate, pointing out that zoos, while imperfect, allow people to “see what these wonderful creatures are like and to understand the responsibility that the human race has towards gorillas”.

A similar point was made in our pages last week by marine conservationists in the UAE. Concerned that residents and citizens had become so disconnected from the natural world quite literally beyond their shores, one, Ahmed Al Hashimi of the Ministry of Climate Change and Environment, suggested that getting people out into the ocean and scuba diving would make them understand what was at stake. “If you don’t see it, you will not care,” he said.

It’s certainly a worthy aim. There is such an abundance of natural life in the seas that experiencing it is likely to make anyone more careful about pollution and conserving what life remains.

And yet the prime issue is not only individual behaviour. Overfishing, the disposal of rubbish into the seas, and chemicals from man-made products, all contribute to the degredation of the marine environment. Those are issues that go beyond one country and one region. Certainly, public pressure will help – and that pressure is assisted by people experiencing marine life – but regulating what goes into the sea and how much of it we take out is a far bigger job than for one country.